Paperweight c. 1845 - 1860

Curator: Here we have a paperweight created by Baccarat Glassworks, sometime between 1845 and 1860. It’s currently part of the Art Institute of Chicago’s collection. Editor: My first impression is a feeling of stillness. The glass encapsulates a perfect, idealized flower frozen in time. It's almost like an artifact of preserved memory. Curator: Exactly. The flower is highly stylized, not realistically rendered, hinting at layers of symbolic meanings. A single bloom surrounded by buds evokes potential and continuity. These objects were luxury goods, after all. What might this level of crafted stillness represent in its own time, when the speed of things had not accelerated to the pace of modernity? Editor: That makes me wonder about class and privilege in mid-19th century France. Glassmaking itself speaks to technological advances, while this decorative object’s very existence points to a world of leisure. This isn’t mere survival, but a conscious curation of one's environment. Who did it mean to capture and possess that moment? Curator: Glass has a history reaching back through millennia, across empires and civilizations. Consider what glass represents: clarity, fragility, transformation. Glass blowing, specifically, embodies alchemy. And a paperweight: the most mundane intention of securing the chaos of loose paper but with the transformative permanence that the beauty of the blown glass vessel conveys. It brings stability and order—physically and conceptually. Editor: But that's exactly where the tension lies! It wants to ground the ethereal, to tame something intrinsically free. The visual tension hints to wider tensions related to ambition and hierarchy during this period of industrial transformation. Curator: Precisely. Think too about how often flowers have been used to signify coded meanings across art history. We see here what seems to be a burgundy rose surrounding a white interior, symbols of sacrifice, discretion, new beginnings and hope. All this pressed into a dome of clear, substantial glass, ready for any office. Editor: So it goes beyond mere decoration to making silent statements about aspirations and control. Thank you, I'll never look at paperweights the same way! Curator: And I am equally drawn to consider glass beyond merely a physical material, to consider glass and its process, like art history, as the ongoing recording of human aspirations.